Eddie Robinson said, “Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?” and somebody made a noise outside the motel room, out on the balcony. I eased the volume down on the television and listened: nothing for a moment, then whoever it was knocked at the sliding glass door.
I turned off the set and checked my watch. I’d been looking at the late late show, which was just getting over anyway, and it was ten before two A.M. About right for Broker, though maybe a shade early; I’d expected him to show more like three-thirty or four, when it’d be extremely unlikely anybody’d be up and about to see him come calling.
The knocking continued, got insistent. I swigged down the last of the Coke and got up off the bed, set the empty on the dresser next to the three bottles I’d drained watching the old gangster picture, which wasn’t bad at all considering its age. That Robinson guy was a pro, you really had to respect him. But every fifteen minutes two clowns came on and pitched used cars for half an hour, and each time they came on I went out for a Coke. On my way to the door I opened my suitcase on the stand and got out the automatic and held it behind me.
I’d cleaned the gun and switched barrels on it since the afternoon; the silencer was on and clean, too.
I slid the door open a crack and the son of a bitch stuck his foot in and with it slid the glass panel hard open and came in fist-first, and it was a goddamn big fist, the mother of all fists, half-filling my face as it struck. My feet went out from under me and the automatic jumped out of my hand and tumbled under the bed-but the guy hadn’t even seen the gun. By the time he was in the door and getting his first look at me, I was on my ass.
My nose was bleeding, not broken but bleeding, and I was stunned. But I could see that the guy’s hands were empty, so I didn’t dive for the automatic under the bed. I wanted first to play the situation out, at least a few moment’s worth.
He was pretty big. Six-two, I’d say, which put him four inches over my head, and he was a solid two hundred pounds in a nicely cut tan business suit. He was around forty, or forty-five, with a college fraternity face set under iron-gray short-cropped hair that just missed being a butch. There were no lines on that face, not a one, except where his brow was crinkling over close-set gray eyes that peered out from behind-Christ, yes-dark-framed glasses. What the hell kind of material was Broker sending out, these days?
I tried to wipe the blood away from my nose with my forearm, but more flowed down to take its place, and the stuff was all over my suit. I was a mess. What was the fucking deal? Sure, I gave Broker a bad time, but this sending out strong-arms to hassle me was boon-dock thinking. I didn’t get it, I just didn’t. Broker and me understood each other, didn’t we? He knew that hard time I gave him back at the restaurant was to let him know I wouldn’t be pushed, didn’t he?
Then I realized I’d been on the floor five or ten seconds and the guy with glasses hadn’t done a damn thing. He was just standing there, brow crinkled, teeth bared, crouching like Tarzan or somebody waiting for his opponent to get up and fight like a man. Good God, was that what he was waiting for? Well, fuck him. He could come to me.
I’m no wrestler; I’m no boxer. I weigh a hundred fifty-five and I’m in good shape but nothing spectacular. I’ve never liked hand-to-hand combat, and I’ve never mastered any of its subtleties; and I don’t have a belt of any color in karate or anything else. But I have an advantage over a lot of guys bigger and stronger than me, when it comes down to a fight, and that’s my total lack of principles. When he came over to me thinking the fight was over before it started, I kicked his balls up inside him.
He started in rolling around on the floor, hands between his legs. I pulled his coat down around his shoulders and knocked him cold on the first try. I gave him a fast, thorough frisk. He was unarmed. His billfold had driver’s license, credit cards and other identification, all in the name George Swanson, supposedly from St. Paul, Minnesota.
What shit was this?
The phone rang while I was trying to figure it out I picked up the receiver and a voice said, “George?” and I recognized the voice and figured it out and started to laugh.
When I got through laughing, I set the receiver down on the nightstand, the voice squeaking, “George? George!” and hauled George Swanson out into the deserted hall, dumping him down a good ways from my door. Then I went back to the room and picked up the receiver and said, “After what I did to your husband, I don’t think he’ll be of much use to you for a day or two.”
I heard her take air in through her teeth, an angry hissing, a pissed-off snake. In my mind’s eye I could see Helen Swanson, and her thin dark naked body, as she said, “Bastard. Jesus Christ prick bastard.”
“Now, now.”
“You… you…” She sputtered on like that for a while, and there was a strange tone to her voice. Confusion? Fear? Arousal?
“What’d I do, piss you off this afternoon somehow?” I asked the phone. “Or do you do this to all of us? Sit out in your black bikini and sucker us in and then later tell old George about it, so he can play defender of woman- hood.”
“I only tell him sometimes.” Now there was a smile in her voice. It was soft. She was trying to be sexy. “I just tell him when somebody I like doesn’t appreciate me.”
“Hell, lady, I appreciate you. I really do. You’re something else.”
“I hope he didn’t hurt you.”
“No. Not at all. I enjoy getting punched in the nose.”
“I… I just told him you made a pass… I didn’t know he’d get rough.”
“You knew he’d get rough,” I said. “That’s what he always does, isn’t it? Tell me, what’s he like when he comes back fresh from beating the hell out of one of your ex-sweeties?”
“He’s beautiful,” she said. I could almost see the big fat self-indulgent grin she’d have going. “He’s mean and he’s beautiful. It’s the only time I can stand him in bed.”
“Well don’t expect much from him tonight.” Somebody was making noise in the background.
“Someone’s at the door,” she whispered, in a quickinto-the-closet sort of voice.
“I wonder who it could be,” I said.
“Listen…” She laughed softly. “I’m naked right now. What do you think of that?”
“I think it figures.”
“After he… falls back asleep, I’ll… come up to your room
… okay? You owe me that much.”
“You come upstairs I got a Coke bottle for you and that’s all.” I shook my head. “Let him in, will you? He’s probably out there bleeding all over the hall. He could use some help.”
I hung up.
I retrieved my automatic, switched on the TV again and found nothing going on any of the stations, flicked the set off and stretched out on the bed to wait for the Broker. Hell, I shouldn’t have underestimated Broker like that. Things weren’t rough enough yet that he’d stoop to hiring a George Swanson.
I laughed again, but only for a moment. It wasn’t really funny, not at all. Disgusting was more like it, the goddamn bitch. But who was I to judge? Takes all kinds to make a world.